Iran-Iraq war is probably my favorite subject when it comes to military history. Glad to you covered it. Hope to see more, it'd be interesting to hear you talk about the later war and how poorly it was fought on both sides. The geopolitical mess it became is fascinating as well, and really underappreciated. No one seems to know about the war and yet it basically set the stage for a lot of modern geopolitics. And the Woods and Murray book is great. I'd also recommend "The Iran Iraq War" by Razoux for a more political perspective on the war.

Listening to this description of the invasion of Khuzestan makes me think it a pretty good setting for a CM game. Lots of historical scenarios and a potential for hypothetical moves.

Amazing as always Hapless, please cover the rest of the war as well, it sounds really interesting to learn about the reality of warfare Saddam found himself facing!

Love it, dude. You know I love when a War Room drops. Definitely an unexpected topic but one that deserves to be covered especially in the way this programme does it.

Wow I was just wondering if CM had a scenario with this war. The Iran Iraq war is fascinating but sadly doesn't get much attention. Thank you! This war was what really got me into geopolitics due to how many countries had their hands in the supply of arms and equipment.

I'm glad more people are looking into Arab/Mid East conflicts more but unfortunately, they have more myths than WW2 at this point due to poor access to primary sources. The whole "Iraq dusted off British exercise plans and used that for the invasion" was simply incorrect assumption by the New York Times on October 16th 1980 article "British, in 1950, Helped Map Iraqi Invasion of Iran". The actual invasion of Iran was the responsibility of Chief-of-Staff Jabbal Al Shanshal, who delegated it to Operations Chief Lt.Gen AbdulJabar Al Asadi. Asadi was a graduate of the British Staff School so that's probably where the idea that it was a British plan started. The plan was actually made years prior but it kept being revised downwards over the years due to the increasing strength of the Iranian Army. Originally, it called for a seizure of all of Western Iran, but by the time of Saddam, it had regressed to simply be about seizing Khuzestan. Also, the Iraqi Air Force strikes on Iranian bases were never intended to emulate the Israeli attacks of the Six-Day War. Brigadier Ahmad Sadik of the Airforce Intelligence Directorate stated in the an interview years later that they were well aware of the limitations their craft had in delivering payloads to targets and so settled simply on runway cratering to buy 48 hours for the Army to proceed with the invasion. Hitting parked planes was discouraged because they needed to ground the IRIAF for 48 hours for the ground phase to succeed and picking off individual IRIAF Aircraft was considered a waste of ammunition and wouldn't seriously dent IRIAF Short term operations (Oh? You took out 3 F-4 Phantoms and Two F-5s? Congrats, the entire rest of the Iranian squadron has scrambled before you touched back at base). The IRIAF managed to sortie in much shorter than 48 hours but they focused on attacking Iraqi Air bases and oil facilities and not the Iraqi army straight away. So in the end, the ground troops got their 48 hours though probably not the way the IrAF wanted (and it was a moot point because 48 hours was nowhere near enough time). Sources: The Iran-Iraq War Volume 1: The Battle for Khuzestan, September 1980-1982. E.R Hooton, Tom Cooper, Farzin Nadimi Wars of Modern Babylon: A History of the Iraqi Army from 1921 to 2003 . Col. Pesach Malovany

Thank you for this video the Iran-Iraq war is not talked about enough.

Awesome video! It provides a great overview over the initial phases of a war that unfortunately isn't talked much about here in the West. Fun fact: Here in Germany the Iran-Iraq war is referred to as the 1st Gulf War (1. Golfkrieg), while the 1990 Gulf War is referred to as the 2nd Gulf War (2. Golfkrieg).

I’m addicted to your war room videos

Glad someone is covering the Iran-iraq war. I feel it does not get talked about enough despite the war lasting 8 years, 1 Million+ casualties on both sides, and shaped Iraq's policy to Kuwait that led to the gulf war.

I've loved your vids for a while, but when I saw the title I jumped on Patreon before I watched this. You make AMAZING AMAZING content with especially high knowledge on armored warfare, your editing + knowledge are more than worth a subscription. But Iran is my focus academically so I appreciate your expertise here 10x. Thank you for your work, you're frankly a phenom. I consider your matter of fact attitude to the dirty business of armored warfare invaluable.

goood, any combat mission scenarios/campains about this period?

Always wanted to learn more about the iran-iraq war thank you for this video

This series has no parallel on youtube!

I really like your War Room series, keep them coming. You did lay out the context intelligibly enough for even me to understand, kudos for that! Timestamps would be nice to have as you go beyond the 10-minute time span. IMHO. Were you using Helion published series as a source by the way?

Glad to see this covered, few years back people started diving into ww1, now i see more attention for korean war and very early cold war. This is topic i hope more channels will dive into next cause scale of this conflict compared with how miniscule its representation in media is, it really shows how ultra narrow popular view on history is.

That Tu-22 tail gunner is a chad

If you have never tried graviteam tactics minus front game with the Iran/Iraq war campaign dlc I would highly recommend it. If you like combat mission you will probably like graviteam too.

Hey, just a heads-up: this episode is not yet in the War Room Podcast playlist.

This war would make for an interesting combat mission game.

Ever since I've read The Short Victorious War by David Weber; I am very dubious to anyone that launches a war that is suppose to be short and ends in victory; it is never short nor victorious.

22:40 I suppose the word "assumption" is very literal here. It seems like nobody did any staff work

Can we talk about why it's got a #peloponnesianwar tag?

I sometimes debate a guy that is a staunch authoritarian absolutist and when I present examples from Saddam's era he gets angry and personal 😂

Reminds me of the initial assault of 24 February 2022.

A war that the superpowers didn't want to have a winner, but in fact the Iranians are the winners because they didn't let Saddam achieve any of his goals.

'The Iranian attacks failed, mostly due to Iraqi artillery.' Get used to that statement if you do any research at all into this war.

Saddam Hussein trying not make a big army then completely mess it up by filling it with mostly incompetent people challenge (impossible) aside from jokes this also came to bite Saddam in the ass in 1991 and 2003

first hahaaaa